This invention generally relates to enteric feeding tubes and particularly to enteric feeding tubes which are inserted into the interior of a patient's stomach through the patient's abdominal and stomach walls.
There are a number of patient's who are unable to chew or swallow for relatively long periods of time. Examples of such patient's include those who are neurologically impaired, e.g. stroke, those who have had traumatic injury to their head or neck areas. e.g. a broken jaw, and those who have an obstruction in their esophagus, e.g. cancer. In these instances, it is common practice to insert an enteric feeding tube, sometimes called a gastrostomy tube or catheter, through the patient's abdominal and gastric walls into the interior of the patient's stomach in order to feed the patient nutrients, medicaments and the like through the gastrostomy tube until such time of the patient can chew and swallow on his or her own.
There are several well known techniques for inserting a gastrostomy tube into a patient's stomach for enteral feeding and medication. One of such techniques involves making an opening in portions of the stomach wall and the abdominal wall and passing the gastrostomy tube through the opening until its distal end is well disposed within the patient's stomach. Very frequently in this technique the stomach wall is secured to the abdominal wall by means of a plurality of T-fasteners. The opening in the abdominal and stomach walls may be formed by means of a Seldinger technique wherein a relatively large needle is inserted through the walls into the stomach, a guidewire or a peel-away introducer sheath, such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,166,469 is inserted through the needle forming the opening and then the needle is removed. The opening is usually enlarged to allow for the passage of the gastrostomy tube by advancing a series of dilators of increasing diameters through the opening.
However, it is not uncommon to experience some difficulty in advancing the dilators and a gastrostomy tube through the opening formed in the patient's abdominal and stomach walls. If the stomach wall is secured to the abdominal wall by T-fasteners, sometimes the forces applied to the stomach wall by the advancing dilators or gastrostomy tube are sufficiently high to cause the stomach wall to tear away from the T-fasteners which secure the stomach wall to the abdominal wall. If the stomach wall is not secured to the abdominal wall, the stomach wall tends to be pushed away by the dilators. i.e. forming a tent-like indentation in the stomach wall.
What has been needed is a system which can easily advance a gastrostomy tube through the patient's abdominal wall and stomach wall so that the distal end thereof is properly disposed within the patient's stomach without damage to the patient's stomach wall. These and other needs are satisfied by the present invention.